Getting timber out of forests and to market means that heavily laden lorries are often to be seen on minor roads in rural areas.

But one way to get them off those roads is for the lorries to make use of the 9,600km of in-forest road - and around 1,600 bridges – throughout Scotland’s forests

This amazing, hidden network - maintained by Forest Enterprise Scotland’s civil engineers – has recently been added to with a Glen Orchy project to replace a bridge, improve access and create new forest roads.

The new bridge (replacing an old, 30m Bailey Bridge) is part of the ongoing extension of the forest road from Bridge of Orchy that will allow timber extraction without using the unclassified Glen Orchy road.

Gregg Reid, Area Civil Engineer for FES, said:

“The new bridge comes in at 36m and 44 tonnes and, as with any job of this size in the middle of a forest, it presented some interesting challenges.

“The next stage of this project is a 3.5km link road from the new bridge to the road at Sroine Hill.

“Once that’s completed, we’ll have a 15km stretch of in-forest road that will keep timber lorries off the minor public road, making travelling that much less stressful for everyone.”